Stand Up For Jesus

Pope Francis endorsed same-sex civil unions for the first time as pontiff while being interviewed for the feature-length documentary Francesco, which premiered at the Rome Film Festival on Wednesday, Oct 21, 2020.

“Homosexual people have the right to be in a family,” the Pope said in the interview. “They are children of God. What we have to have is a civil union law, that way they are legally covered.”

We are God’s children by creation but due to sin, His will is for us to return to Him to become once more holy children of God. The marriage institution setup my God at creation was to achieve this. In essence we through “be fruitful and multiply” thereby creating copies of God through our holy children.

As it is written in Malachi 2:15, “And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.”

Our enemy, Satan through sin tries to destroy God’s holy plan for His children, the ones who obey His word by living it. He does this in many ways but his most sinister attack is to redefine what a family looks like. Doing this, he now creates an environment for his hatred to grow in the lives of the people who obey him. God will never go against His Word!

Jesus in John 8:44, 47 defines who are the children of God are by contrasting who the children of the Devil are. “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God.”

The Devil perverted the holy institution of marriage through the practice of unholy and lustful desires of the flesh. He created an aberration called same sex civil union. Biologically, same sex couples cannot procreate and although they may adopt children or have them through surrogacy, they are trying to satisfy the inner godly desire to raise a family through fellowship with their Creator.

I admit that they are children of God. We are all children of God but He has given us principles to live by. God has shown in His Word that the family is made up of a husband and wife and their children. Families where there two fathers or two mothers is not sanctioned by God. Marriage was instituted by God Himself and it was and still is between one man and one woman.

The civil union law the Pope supports and advocates is contrary to God’s laws of marriage and sexual morality. Homosexual people have a right to be protected by the law and to not be discriminated against because of their lifestyle but any union between two men or two women will not be recognized by God and those who adhere to the teachings in His Word.

The Pope is entitled to his beliefs but I have a problem with what he told Juan Carlos Cruz the Chilean survivor of clergy sexual abuse who was also featured in the documentary. In May 2018, when Cruz, an abuse survivor told the pope he was gay in a long meeting in the Vatican, “He said to me, ‘Juan Carlos, that’s not a problem. You have to be happy with who you are. God made you this way and loves you this way, and the pope loves you this way.” To say that God made someone gay is an outright lie because it goes against His Word which says, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness,” (Genesis 1:26).

God is very clear in His Word about homosexuality. “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination” (Leviticus 18:22).  “If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them” (Leviticus 20:13). Homosexuality is listed among other sins like adultery, incest, bestiality and spiritualism. In Moses’ time, God had laws of sexual morality which He expected His people to obey. That hasn’t changed. Today, He expects those who profess to be His children to obey His Word. His Word hasn’t changed. All of these things are still sins and should not be practiced by those who say they are Christians.

In Romans 1:24-27, Paul, through the Holy Spirit says, “Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.” Homosexuality and lesbianism are against nature. God would not create anyone this way and then give them over to it because they are doing what is natural. This doesn’t make any sense.

Yes, God loves everyone. No one is denying that. God loves the person but not their sin. He loved King David but He had a problem with David committing adultery and murder. Jesus loved the woman caught in adultery but He told her to stop sinning. Love doesn’t accept, condone or condemn. Jesus didn’t condemn the adulteress. He intervened and saved her life. She received grace but was told to obey the law by not committing adultery anymore. He will do the same for anyone who seeks Him. He will help them to forsake their sin and live a life that is pleasing and acceptable in God’s sight.

Homosexuality is a sin and those who live and practice it are in direct opposition to God’s Word. Pope Francis does not speak for God. God promised in His Word that if “we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Yes, God is love but He is also holy. And a holy God cannot tolerate cherished sin. Cherished sin is when someone refuses to forsake something they know is contrary to God’s Truth. Paul talks about this.

Jude talks about Sodom and Gomorrah where the men of that city wanted to have relations with two men (angels) who went there to bring Lot and his family out. What they wanted to do to them was so abominable, that Lot was willing to give his virgin daughters to them instead. That’s how bad homosexuality was in his eyes. “…as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire” (Jude 1:7). Jude described homosexuality as going after strange flesh. It is going after that which is unnatural. Their ruin serves as a dire warning that God who is holy will destroy the ungodly.

The apostle Peter whom the Catholic Church claims was their first Pope said, “and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly; and delivered righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked (for that righteous man, dwelling among them, tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds)—then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise authority” (2 Peter 2:6-9).

God’s Word is also clear about who will not enter His kingdom. “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9, 10). Paul also tells us, “such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” (verse 11). There is hope. There was hope for Becket Cook. Read his story.

Cook stated that the Bible was very clear in its and that it’s misleading for anyone to say he or she is a “gay Christian.” To him, it seems strange to identify oneself with sin. If asked how he identified himself, his answer would be, “I don’t identify by my sexuality. I’m a follower of Christ who has a lot of struggles, including same-sex attraction.”

There was hope for Rachel Gilson who was a Lesbian atheist until she found Jesus. Check out her story. Although her same-sex attraction hasn’t vanished, she believes Jesus is worthy of obedient trust and she’s willing to take up her cross and follow His teaching on sexuality.

We must stand up for Jesus who came not to speak His own Words but what the Father told Him. He died for our sins. All He asks in return is that we stop sinning and live the kind of life He desires for us until He returns.

And he said to them all, If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me (Luke 9:23).

Sources: The Hill; Indy Star; Premier Christian News; The New York Times;